Become a Pinterest Virtual Assistant

How to become a Pinterest virtual assistant is a question that I'm asked quite frequently! I got my start as a Pinterest virtual assistant back in 2015.

It's surprisingly not a topic I write about too much on this site. Now that I focus so much on all my Pinterest courses and products, I decided it's time to share more about how I go started as a Pinterest virtual assistant and how I got to where I am today.

Even though Believe In A Budget is geared around making money online and side hustles, there's more to my business than just this website.

If you've read my most income reports, you'll know that my blog and business income comes primarily from my Pinterest courses and products, affiliate income and ad income.

When I first got started with my income reports, much of my blog income came from working as a Pinterest virtual assistant.

Since launching Believe In A Budget in 2015, a lot has happened over the past two and a half years.

Here's how I made the progression from a Pinterest virtual assistant to teaching multiple Pinterest courses, creating Pinterest products and speaking about Pinterest.

How I used Pinterest to increase traffic

I started my freelance career as a Pinterest virtual assistant completely by accident.

I had no prior experience as a virtual assistant or freelancer when I started my Pinterest VA business.

Instead, everything happened very organically. I was also one of the original Pinterest virtual assistants in my niche, which definitely helped propel my business.

In January 2015, I launched this blog Believe In A Budget. Between January and spring of 2015, I was only receiving a few thousand page views per month. As someone brand new to blogging with no experience, I primarily focused on writing content and building authority in the personal finance niche.

After I settled into a schedule – I went on to write three times per week for my entire first year of blogging! – I realized that I needed to do something about my traffic.

While I shied away from Facebook and Twitter, one area where I felt comfortable was Pinterest!

Pinterest made complete sense to me. With a background in design, I was able to quickly design images that were ‘pin-worthy' and clickable. I started studying pins that ranked really well. I focused on images, colors, fonts and pin descriptions.

In my first month of using Pinterest, my traffic shot up!

Here's what my monthly page views looked like for the rest of the year (although they continued to climb in 2016):

July 2015 – 3,691

August 2015 – 17,341

September 2015 – 40,047

October 2015 – 45,869

November 2015 – 54,339

December 2015 – 159,869

More than 90% of my traffic came from Pinterest each month!

One of the important findings was that I was able to grow my traffic with a relatively low amount of followers. At the time of publishing the case study, I had around 2,700 followers on Pinterest. This was astonishing because I didn't have to focus on the number of Pinterest ‘followers' in order to get traffic back to Believe In A Budget.

Shortly after my traffic increased, I wrote this case study about how Pinterest helped my blog grow from 5,000 monthly page views to 40,000 monthly page views in only a couple of months. While the Pinterest case study had absolutely nothing to do with my website, I decided to publish my findings anyways. I figured if anything, maybe my post would help a fellow blogger who was new like me!

How I got started as a Pinterest virtual assistant

Before I knew it, fellow bloggers were reaching out and asking if I would be willing to help grow their blog traffic with Pinterest.

Initially, I resisted. I wanted to tell everyone no because I wasn't sure I was qualified to help them. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this was the door I was meant to walk through!

So I said yes to everyone! I was cheap – too cheap – but wanted to help as many blogs and businesses as possible while offering a fair price since I was just starting out.

As time went on, I was able to help almost every Pinterest client! I started offering the following services:

Consultations

Designing Pinterest pins

Writing pin descriptions that would rank well in the Pinterest search results

As time went by, I was able to increase my rates. I started working with higher end clients with bigger budgets, which meant I was able to work the same amount of hours but earn more!

Fortunately, I was able to rely on word of mouth for nearly all my blogger clients. I did very little pitching and only sent out a handful of pitches to bloggers that I really wanted to work with!

I also decided to get more pro-active and created a ‘hire me' page on my website. Even though Believe In A Budget was primarily focused on budgeting and side hustling, I decided that I had nothing to lose by adding this freelance page to my website.

While I no longer have my ‘hire me' page on this site, here's a brief snapshot of what it used to look like in the early stages:

My ‘hire me' page really helped take my services to the next level. In addition to helping bloggers in all different niches, I started working with businesses across the country and internationally.

Here's a snapshot of some of my Pinterest clients that I have worked with:

Wellness and spa centers

Nail salons

Magazine

Etsy sellers

Brick and mortar shops

Gift box subscription services

Contractors/vendors

Authors

City tourism and travel

Furniture makers

Children's toy manufacturer

Church

and more!

My Pinterest business grew quickly and I was able to launch my own Pinterest management company! In addition to my full time day job, I quickly had over a dozen clients within a couple of months of publishing my Pinterest case study. I was working around the clock and struggling to keep up with everything.

I decided to hire a virtual assistant that could help me with Pinterest. It took some time, but I was able to provide her training so she would be able to assist me with all my Pinterest clients. This was a much stress reliever and a time saver!

Around this time, I also had decided to leave my full time day job! In addition to working as a Pinterest virtual assistant, Believe In A Budget was also starting to bring in online income each month.

Within ten months of launching Believe In A Budget, I was able to walk away from my day job to become a Pinterest virtual assistant and blogger full time. I haven't looked back since!

Transitioning from a Pinterest virtual assistant to a Pinterest educator

In 2016, I realized that my Pinterest management company was still growing and I was starting to get overwhelmed! I was turning down potential clients left and right because I didn't have any free time. I was working with a couple of different VAs to help run my business, but still was feeling a constant pressure to go, go, go!

In addition to the services I was offering as a Pinterest virtual assistant, I was increasing the amount of consultations that I was offering as a one time service for bloggers and business owners that wanted to learn how to use Pinterest, but go the DIY route.

It soon became obvious that I was giving many of my client consultations much of the same framework to get started with Pinterest. While each consultation was customized to fit the client, I definitely felt that everyone was in the same position when just starting out.

After a lot of thinking, this lead to creating Pinterest Presence, an online course for bloggers and business owners that want to use Pinterest but go the DIY route.

I took all the information that I applied to myself and all my clients, packaged it into a course and started to offer it to clients that I didn't have time to help due to time constraints.

As Pinterest Presence launched and started to do well, I decided to pivot in my business. Pinterest Presence was helping entrepreneurs and providing an extra source of income for my business.

After much debate, I decided to scale back my Pinterest management business.

I significantly raised my rates for the majority of my clients – secretly in hopes that some would break up with me so I could reduce my workload. I realized that I could free up a large majority of my time by keeping a handful of clients and save money by reducing the need for VAs.

The transition wasn't easy – there were a few bumps in the road. The greatest advantage to pivoting was that I was able to continue making the same income from Pinterest virtual assistant work while having a small fraction of clients!

I also had more free time to get creative, which is something that had been lacking from my schedule. This meant I could improve my courses to stay current with the latest Pinterest trends and introduce other products that could help DIYers.

In addition to growing my Pinterest business, I started accepting speaking engagements geared around Pinterest. I also became a Tailwind ambassador, which has an official partnership with Pinterest. Now I get to work with the awesome team at Tailwind to help educate other bloggers and business owners learn how to use Pinterest and Tailwind!

Become a Pinterest VA TODAY!

Coming full circle, I was also able to create Become a Pinterest VA TODAY! in late 2016 with my joint venture partner (and bff) Gina Horkey of Horkey HandBook.

Become a Pinterest VA TODAY! is everything I could have imagined and then some! Not only do I get to share everything I have learned to create, launch and succeed as a Pinterest virtual assistant, but I get to help other people start a career as a Pinterest VA.

Yup, you heard that right.

My goal is to help as many people as possible launch a career as a Pinterest virtual assistant. There are so many blogs, online business owners, brick and mortar shops, etc. out there, that there is a shortage of Pinterest VAs.

Because of the shortage, Pinterest virtual assistants are in high demand. Many students are earning between $25-$50+ hour and earn much higher monthly package rates. There's plenty of room to go around for everyone and this is a niche you don't want to miss out on!

What I love about this course is that anyone can take this course, as long as he or she has passion to learn a new skillset and the drive to earn an online income, anyone can succeed as a Pinterest virtual assistant.

I started off not knowing anything as a Pinterest virtual assistant and quickly became in expert in less than two years. It's amazing that without any background experience, I could earn a full time living working from home.

If you're wondering if you have what it takes, check out this interview I did with one of our Pinterest alumni students. Guess what…she got to quit her day job to become a Pinterest virtual assistant full time!

15 Comments

Melissa
on August 14, 2017 at 11:42 am

I’m curious. With the rise in popularity of Instagram and Snapchat, I know that I don’t use Pinterest like I used to. Neither do my friends. In fact, maybe it’s just me/my age group, but among people I know we’ve chatted about how we’re not on Pinterest anymore! I wonder, are companies still spending money to hire people who can drive traffic via Pinterest, or do you think it’s more of a declining method of attracting traffic? I imagine as a Pinterest expert you would know! Thanks and keep up the great content!

rachel banik
on August 16, 2017 at 8:29 am

Who is Gina?

Kristin Larsen
on December 31, 2017 at 1:04 am

Ha, Gina Horkey is over at HorkeyHandbook.com. She’s a killer VA guru and one of my besties in real life 🙂

My daughter just moved due to her husband’s job. She is very interested in becoming a VA. I’m recommending she take your course. I have been following Michelle’s blog for a couple years. She makes great recommendations.

Kristin Larsen
on December 31, 2017 at 1:02 am

Michelle is super nice!

Jeanie
on August 27, 2017 at 11:35 am

What is the cost for the VA course

Kristin Larsen
on December 31, 2017 at 1:02 am

It’s regularl changing because we keep adding to the course and updating sections. If you go to pinterestva.com, get on the waitlist – you’ll receive pricing when we launch!